By Hal Stone, Ph.D., and Sidra Stone, Ph.D.. Reproduced with permission.
Hal and Sidra Stone: their work and the complete article library · Further Reading
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An Open Letter to President George W. BushFebruary 18, 2003Dear President Bush,First, we would like to introduce ourselves to you. We are 75 and 65 yearsold and both of us are psychotherapists, writers, and consciousnessteachers. We have over 90 years of combined experience working withpeoplein many different settings and in many nations around the world. We havewritten five books together and one each separately. These have beentranslated into seven languages. We have five children, three grand children… and a number of cats. We tell you all this simply to establish the factthat we are thoughtful, professional, competent people who have lived fulllives and have experienced a great deal in this world - both separately andas partners.We are not usually alarmists, but as professionals who have worked withpeople all our lives, we are gravely concerned about the current worldsituation, and we feel that this is a very special time. What happens nowwill carry consequences for many years to come. We have seen conflictsbefore in our lives – conflicts that looked extremely dangerous – but now weobserve a frighteningly intense degree of worldwide polarization that seemsto be accelerating at an ever-increasing speed. It is to the issue of thispolarization that we wish to speak.As the President of the United States you can feel this ever-intensifyingpolarization. The world leaders seem to be dividing into those who are withyou and those who are against you. This letter is about what we feel can bedone to begin to neutralize this polarization.It takes immense courage to change one’s consciousness – or way of being inthe world. It often requires a crisis of major proportions to push peopleinto this kind of change process –a major illness or accident that forces us
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to look at the possibility of dying, a threatened divorce, financialreverses, or serious trouble with the law. We each have a choice about howto respond to the crisis. We are challenged to separate from our usual wayof being in the world, broadening our view, and embracing something new.>From what you have said about your life, you have already gone through onemajor change of consciousness. All those years ago when you stoppeddrinkingand changed the way you lived your life, you actually changed yourconsciousness for the first time. We do not know what crisis precipitatedyour change then, but something did. You rose to the occasion and you metthe challenge successfully. Now it seems that you are being challenged tochange again.A change in consciousness – as you already know - results in a change in allour relationships. It changes our relationship to ourselves, to ourfamilies, and to our God. The same is true with nations. On aninternational level we are now experiencing just such a major crisis. Thiscan bring change or it can bring war and catastrophe. The question iswhether we can use this crisis to develop real wisdom, or whether it mustautomatically polarize the world into war.We do not think that war is always wrong – there are times when it is theonly solution to a problem. But those times are few and far between. Ourconcern is that the movement into war should be a thoughtful one in whichthe alternative of peace is also carefully considered. Our concern is thatin the current situation the world has become so intensely polarized (an oldpattern of behavior that divides the world into good guys and bad guys –with ourselves always being the good guys) that we are being led to act in away that we will regret later after the smoke clears and we see what wehavedone.In our work, we call this “the slap”. When we look at something from onlyone point of view - from one part of ourselves - we literally cannot see anyother. Later, when we realize that there was an opposite point of view –when we see what it was that we overlooked – we feel as though an oppositepart of us has slapped us.
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President Bush, what is most worrisome to us about you and your staff isyour contribution to this polarization. In the history of the world, thiskind of thinking has led to the most horrific behavior. When thepolarization was at its height, the behavior seemed quite reasonable. Butwhen people looked back at what was done, and with the help of othersviewedthe behavior with different and wiser eyes, they could see the ways in whichthe passion of polarization had blinded them.Every day that passes someone in your administration reminds us that someperson or some other country is evil. Using language such as the “axis ofevil” comes from a part of us that sees us as being good and living lives ofrighteousness and all darkness as living “out there” in the world. That partof us doesn’t realize that each of us has darkness and evil – as well asgood - within. It doesn’t realize that the battle on the outside is areflection of the battle that we all must wage within our own souls.We are less concerned about the issue of whether we go to war than we areabout the issue of what parts of you and what parts of Mr. Rumsfeld aremoving us towards this war. What we hear from your core administrativegroupis a constant barrage of emotionally charged judgments of others. Inpsychological terms, you are disowning your own evil and projecting it outonto the world around you. This makes us more and more distrustful of yourjudgment, and makes us wonder about which selves are operating in you insuch an “automatic pilot” kind of thinking and reacting.This is having a terrible effect on much of the world. It pulls forth anequal and opposite reaction in others. The more they look evil to you; themore you look evil to them. It is a mathematical relationship. It is evenlybalanced. It is a recipe for disaster!Something happened to you on September 11, 2001 that we don’t think youunderstand. Something that felt wonderful. On that day you were takenoverby the hero archetype. Throughout history this archetype has operated inmany people. This archetype acts like an infusion of super-powerful energy.
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It gives us the power to do very heroic things. It is a part of us – or aself - that comes from a different place in the psyche, from a differentplace in the brain. It is like a psychological instinct.The hero archetype doesn’t just operate in presidents and generals. It canhelp anyone behave heroically in life. It helped our firefighters andpolicemen on September 11th. It can help any of us get through a difficulttime or help us work long hours for a new idea or cause. It can help us dothings that go against our fears. These are the good sides of the heroarchetype. Clearly after 9/11 you became stronger as you were carried moreand more by this kind of archetypal energy. It made you stronger and it gaveyou the power to lead us. It was a wonderful gift to you and to our country!The down side of this energy is that it isn’t personal. It gives us thehero’s strength but not always the wisdom to balance it. We often tend torun over people when this power is operating in us because we feel only thepower and we no longer feel our own vulnerability. That is the key issue ofthe dark side of the hero archetype. We lose our vulnerability! We have todo things more and more heroically.Being identified with the heroic energy is very heady stuff and it usuallystarts out well. But it often goes sour as time passes because we loseclarity when we are in the hands of this archetype and the super-heroenergycontinues to rush through us. Our colleagues get caught up in this as well;the same hero myth gets activated in them and serves their own powerneeds.It is to their advantage to support this archetype in you and they just addfuel to the fire.There are many archetypes waiting to jump into the driver’s seat of our“psychological cars” and run our lives for us, especially when our situationis dangerous. It seemed to us that about a year after 9/11 a new energybegan to take over in you and join with the energy of the existing herosystem. This new archetype is “The Savior.” It has a distinctly religiousquality. The Savior must save the people from evil. There is evil anddarkness in the world and some one or some group must save the world fromthis evil. This archetype would make you feel that you are the anointed and
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appointed son (or daughter ) of God whose job it is to rectify thisdangerous situation. This puts us back to the days of the crusades and aholy war.Now we know that there are some very dark forces in the world today andwefeel you are being completely honest and sincere in your desire to do goodand chase away evil. Here, though, we have a problem and a very big problemat that. We have been psychotherapists and teachers for 90 years betweenus.Both of us led complex lives before we met and they have become even morecomplex during the past 30 years of our time together.We have had the opportunity - the profound privilege - of working with thehuman soul in hundreds upon hundreds of clients. We have worked with theirdreams, with their fantasies, with their depressions and rage and anger andlove and lust and heroism and greed and warlike nature and lovingsensitivity. I wish we could share with you, President Bush, some of thesedreams and inner realities.Do you know what our conclusion has been to all this? Our conclusion is thatit is all inside as it is all outside. Each human being is a microcosm ofthe macrocosm. Just as in our world there is good and evil and light anddark, so it is within the human psyche. Our conclusion is that each one ofus lives with a most amazing combination of good and evil. And each one ofus is challenged to deal with this on an inner level as best we can, so thatwe do not add our disowned evil to the very real evils outside of us,causing them to spiral out of control. That is the work we are challenged todo and that is the work you are challenged to do.Saddam Hussein is a man ruled by dark forces. We have no issue with that.Our deepest concern however is not the Saddam Hussein that lives in theworld. It is the Saddam Hussein that lives in the hidden recesses of yourown heart, of our own heart, in everyone’s heart. If we don’t ultimatelyrecognize that this kind of energy lives in each of us, we keep projectingit on the outer Husseins and this makes it impossible to deal with thedarkness in the world in any way other than war.
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We are afraid of what is happening now! But we are not afraid primarilybecause of the prospect of war. We lived through World War II and theKorean conflict where Hal was a psychologist treating casualties from thiswar. Sidra worked in the VA, treating veterans from as far back as WW I.Welived through the Cold War, the Chinese intervention during the Koreanconflict, the Cuban missile crisis, Russia exploding the 50-megaton bomb,Vietnam, and Desert Storm. We lived through 9/11. We have seen manyfrightening times. We are much less afraid of war than we are afraid of thetotal projection of darkness and a narrowing of perspective.We are concerned that the Savior and Hero archetypes are increasinglydominating your life and that our world is being led into a holy war that wedon’t want and that we fear will end very badly.We are concerned that you have lost contact with your vulnerability and thatyou are unable to feel the consequences of what is being unleashed. We areconcerned that you listen only to people who agree with your way of lookingat things and that you are becoming increasingly unable to feel otherpossibilities. We are concerned that a savior mentality is becoming evermore deeply involved in your decision making process and – perhaps - that ofyour administration.What can any of us do? What do we ask of you? What do we ask ofourselves?One of the strongest indications of a mature personality is the ability tostand between the opposite viewpoints in conflict situations and to be ableto hold both when making decisions. This doesn’t mean that we becomepassive in the way we conduct our life. This doesn’t mean that we don’t havean ethical or moral sense! It means that we are able to feel the two sidesof a situation. We must still ultimately make a decision about thesituation. But the decisions we make are not made on “automatic pilot”,the decisions we make come from a deeper and wiser place within.This is the reason - at least theoretically the reason - why executives havea board of directors and an advisory board. The idea is to get a broad rangeof differing (often intensely opposing) input from people. Then, after
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assimilating this information, the executive is better prepared to act andmake the best decision possible.This works in personal relationships as well. We have learned in our ownlives that when one of us has a negative reaction to the other person wemust stop and take that seriously. It is essential that I (Hal) feel thefeelings that Sidra has and it is essential that I (Sidra) feel the feelingsthat Hal has. Either of us might still do what we originally intended todo, but by feeling the reality of the other person’s point of view, ourdecision to act is made in relation to the other person.Your decisions recently have moved farther and farther away from what wearerecommending. You sound increasingly black and white on all issues. Notonly don’t you seem to care how other people feel but, instead, you seem tothrive on how tough you are and how little you do care.This is why you are alienating so many people. People feel that you don’tcare, that you are going through the motions of debate with no awarenesswhatsoever as to what others are feeling. We honestly believe that if youtook a vote, even amongst the non-Muslims of the world, you would find thatmore people are worried about your warlike tendencies than about SaddamHussein’s. This does not have to do with your clear desire to go to war. Itis because people feel that you do not give serious consideration to otherpoints of view. And so they react to you as though you were a bully ratherthan a wise leader of a great nation.If we must go to war, let it not be an action dictated by the archetype of ahero living out a John Wayne fantasy. Let the decision come from a wisdom,a depth, and a maturity that the world can respect.We would like to make the following recommendations to you to help slowdownthis polarization process:1. Spend some time alone. Try to get away from the constant pressure ofthe same voices that you listen to day in and day out.
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2. Spend some quiet time with your wife. Listen to her. We suspect thatshe would have some interesting things to say.3. Bring in some advisors that are different from the ones you have.Listen to this other feedback in addition to what you already have received.4. Put a moratorium on public statements that are inflammatory in naturefrom any of your administration people. This would be particularly true ofSecretary Rumsfeld who is one of the most polarizing politicians we haveever known. And this would include you because you have become increasinglypolarized. Please think before you make any more inflammatory statements.5. Pay attention to your dreams. What are they saying to you?6. Pray for wisdom! Being wise is as important as being heroic. Beingwise means that you are able to live with ambiguity; that you are able tofeel the opposites in all the issues and conflicts that come your way.7. Please catch hold of the hero/savior archetypal drama that is playingout within you. If you want to really be truly wise, you will begin torecognize that the war between good and evil is playing out inside you andinside all of us all the time. The inner Saddam Hussein, the inneranti-Christ, is an archetypal energy that we must all deal with from the daywe are born until the day we die. It is all inside you and us. Shooting thebad guy outside doesn’t make it go away on the inside.8. Please recognize that a 51-49 percent split doesn’t mean that you win.It simply means that you have split the country in two and the polarizationyou have created will haunt you forever. We trust that there is a way foryou to make this a win/win situation for the two sides.These are the things that we ask you to do. Here is what we will do from ourside:1. We will do our best not to polarize against you, but will use anydifferences of perspective as a way of learning more about ourselves.2. Whenever we begin to polarize against you, we will try to understand
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what it is that you are carrying that is disowned in us. We will “step intoyour shoes” and stay there until we see your viewpoint. For instance, sinceyou so desperately want to go to war, we will find that part of us thatwants war and would like to eliminate Saddam Hussein from the face of theearth.3. When we find ourselves polarizing against the fundamentalist nature ofyour administration, we will examine this issue and try to make contact withour own fundamentalist nature. We will look at the world through the eyes ofthe fundamentalist part of ourselves.4. When we find ourselves polarizing against the way in which youmanipulate people by making them more vulnerable, we will examine our ownmanipulative selves. We will see how they operate in the world, andparticularly how they operate in relationship to vulnerability.5. We will continue to watch our own dreams and see what they have to sayto us.6. We, too, will pray for wisdom.We are realists and we have no serious expectation that you will read thisletter or answer it, but it was important for us to write it. If, by anychance, you should care to respond to this letter we want to make ourselvesavailable to you or to anyone in your administration you would thinkappropriate. We would like to do whatever we personally can at this pivotalpoint in history.Sincerely yours,Hal Stone, Ph.D. & Sidra Stone, Ph.D.
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Original source and copyright: Hal Stone, Ph.D., and Sidra Stone, Ph.D.. Read the original at Voice Dialogue International.